Is Obama's Iran Deal a 'Dhimmi' Contract?

By A.J. Caschetta
TownHall.com

IRGC Commander Ali Fadavi’s recentthreatto
“drown American vessels” in the Persian Gulf is only
the latest indication that America’s relationship
with Iran resembles a dhimma contract
more than a traditional foreign policy.

Since the seventh century, anyone defeated by
Islamic conquest was given three choices:
conversion, death, or a dhimma contract,
which Bat
Ye’or calls the “treaty of submission for people
conquered by jihad.” By accepting the
third choice, they became dhimmis:
members of a “protected” class whose failure to
submit to Allah was replaced by a compulsory
submissionto
Muslims.

Isolated, disarmed, insulted at every turn, and
coerced into acknowledging their inferiority with
regular self-abasement, dhimmis are expected to show
humility and gratitude to their conquerors.

President Obama’s approach to the Muslim world in
general has been replete with gratitude, flattery,
and apologies –
even, and especially, for violence perpetrated
by Christians one thousand years ago. Obama refuses
to utter the words “Islamist terrorism.” He wildly exaggerates Islam’s
role in “saving” Western culture. At the United
Nations, Obama demandedthat
“the future must not belong to those who slander the
prophet of Islam.” He even put one filmmaker in
jail for doing so.

Obama’s overtures may not be consciously designed to
follow a dhimmi’s accommodation of his master.
However, Ali Khamenei certainly treats Obama as if a
dhimmi contract is in effect, offering only contempt
in return for the president’s obsequious deference.

Obama insists that Iran’s path forward lies at the
UN with the P5+1 partners. Khamenei
answers:

[T]hose who say the future is in negotiations,
not in missiles, are … ignorant.

Within Iran and elsewhere, each Iranian provocation
that goes unanswered by Obama reinforces the
appearance of hisdhimmi status:
Obama pays his tribute and endures his proscribed
submission with gestures of obeisance.

Even video of captured American sailors being
humiliated by the IRGC didn’t rouse the
president from his supine repose. John Kerry
actually thanked “the
Iranian authorities for their cooperation.”

Iran’s violations of sanction have grown more
flagrant with eachpassingyear --
with zero consequences. As the supposedweakerside,
Iran should be expected to deny it had conducted
missile tests, or to claim its ICBM program is just
a space program. Instead, Iran has boasted of the
tests. An emboldened, confident Iran has acted as
thoughitpossesses
the upper hand.

Among the humiliations dhimmis are forced to endure
at the hands of Muslims is a tax called the jizya.
This originates in the Koran:

Fight those who believe not in Allah … until
they pay the Jizyawith
willing submission, and feel themselves subdued
(9:29).

As they present their payment, dhimmis are often
required to prostrate themselves and accept slaps to
the head and neck, symbolic of the fate they avoided
with the treaty. In 1799, British historian William
Eton referred to the jizya as a “capitation
tax” -- permitting dhimmis to “wear their heads”
for another year.

The $100 to $150 billion Iran receives under the
U.S.-brokered Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA) is, surely, the largest jizya payment
in history.

Last July as the White House celebrated the JCPOA,
Khamenei tweeted an image of
Obama holding a gun to his own head.

Six months later, the IRGC fired
missiles dangerously close to the USS Harry S.
Truman.

Despite Iran’s defiant and aggressive behavior, the
president continues to grant concessions. Obama has pushed for
Iran to gain access to the U.S. monetary system.
Obama has even purchased
Iranian nuclear waste.

Meanwhile, Iran threatened to close the Strait of
Hormuz and to
kill Americans found there.

Shortly after the American Revolution, the Barbary
Pirates of Morocco, Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli
began seizing U.S. merchant vessels and demanding
ransom. These Islamic pirates -- from whence the
English term “barbarians” arose -- explained that
the Koran simply gave them the “right and duty to
make war” on non-Muslims.

George Washington did not pay tribute to the
sheikhs. Instead, George Washington ordered the
creation of the U.S. Navy.

They were send to fight what Washington termed the
“nests of banditti.” In 1815, James Madison used
that Navy to defeat the Barbary sheikhs at sea, and
on “the shores of Tripoli.”

Two hundred years later, the Obama administration is
accommodating the “banditti” in Tehran -- and lying
to the American people about it.

President Obama has
assumed the role of a meek and humbled dhimmi paying
tribute to his Muslim protector while enduring his
insults. Washington and Madison would be disgusted.